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Today’s hitting 10.5 in the Insanity Scale as NOFA 2 ambles toward the extended finish lines in one part of D.C. while the FCC preps for the rollout of the national broadband plan in another part of town. It’s so bad, I woke up three columns and two blog posts behind.

One (of many) good thing you can say about the Obama administration is that 14 months ago, broadband was a term maybe .5% of the population even heard used, let alone knew what the heck broadband is. After this week, as we take it to the bridge between NOFA 2 and national plan, even James Brown’s gonna come back and yell “Broadband? Jump back! Make me wanna kiss myself. Hit me!”

So how crazy is it around here? I’m so overwhelmed I’m going to turn over my space to Broadband Lawyer. As I mentioned in my last post, Broadband Lawyer is one of those do-gooders behind the mask who we don’t know, but know we love to have around. B L has some insights on the D.C. dance that’ll probably add to your gray hairs if you care about broadband stimulus or the national plan.

Hit me, B!

Here you go in a nutshell: the latest insider info coming out of the mad warehouse:

Broadband Stimulus.

Aaaah! As you 2,000 or so unfunded applicants and newbie applicants scramble to assemble your Round 2 applications, take some time to pour out some libation in memoriam to the over 150 Round 1 due diligence applicants that are STILL sitting in limbo.

Yup, those fortunate few, once the envy of all the under and unfunded applicants are being/have been told to REAPPLY in Round 2. For some reason or another (don’t ask them why because, like you, they too have NOT BEEN TOLD) their application was not deemed good enough to push them over the hump and actually get funded.

The National Broadband Plan.

I also got a chance to get a sneak peak at the essence of the National Broadband Plan slated for release tomorrow.

The Wireless Industry are winners:

I am obviously not the only one to get a copy of leaked pieces of the plan as there are several journalists and media outlets giving out clues in their publications. The latest came from Businessweek which published a story this morning headlining that AT&T, Verizon, Google May Be Winners in U.S. Broadband Plan. The wireless industry clearly comes out on top the biggest! Why?

The FCC will propose that the Broadcasters give back some of their analog spectrum that they’ve been holding onto for dear life. In exchange, the government will give them a cut in on the action after the FCC re-auctions that spectrum.

2 Responses

100 Mbps without fiber to the home. They are on drugs. Imagine the density of wireless sites to give everyone a wireless 100 Mbps download speed, pretty much every other street light. Okay I exaggerate, but no one has ever been through a permit process for that many towers and antennas.

I think the assumption that you can get 100 Mbps from a wireless network is born in part from the fear of handing Congress a fiber price tag they will automatically reject. If the FCC said that today, but quietly moved to promoting fiber later, I’d be ok with that. I worry that we’ll wake up one day and find tons of money going to the big wireless companies in the hope they can actually deliver this speed.